Re: GNAT GPL 2005 Edition is now available

[David Trudgett <wpower@zeta.org.au.nospamplease>]

Hi Jeff,

Jeff Creem <jcreem@yahoo.com> writes:

>
> I think you need to go read the materials at gnu.org because
> freedom/free in their terms does not mean what you want it to
> mean. 

I think you're misunderstanding what I am saying, and to some extent I
have not been very clear myself in some wording I have chosen here and
there.

I also think I know perfectly well what Stallman and the FSF
want. They want everyone to write Free Software. They would even like
to force people to write Free Software if they want to *use* Free
Software. There are several different but interrelated points to make
about that. I will enumerate some of them here:

1. There is a moral viewpoint and a legal viewpoint. I have been
   dipping into both ends (hence some confusion, perhaps), but I am
   principally speaking from the moral viewpoint, which is at a higher
   level of abstraction from the legal. Hence my use of the word
   '*should*' in at least one place that I recall.

2. What RMS and the FSF *want*, what the GPL *says*, and how it gets
   interpreted in courts of -violence- I mean law, are three different
   things. All of those three things are different from what is
   morally right. It is *never* morally right, for instance, to use
   violence to force or coerce the actions of others, no matter
   whether one's "rights" are being ignored or infringed. Copyright
   law, if taken seriously, does precisely that: it says, "I will
   steal your possessions, abuse you, throw you in prison to be abused
   by violent criminals, and probably ruin your career if you use
   something that I have created in a way I do not wish." Only a
   sociopath or a sociopathic corporation would say such a thing, yet
   that is what copyright law is all about.

3. It is one thing for software to be Free, but quite another for
   humans to be free. Software has no right or claim to be Free.
   Software is an abstraction, it is not a being, it can have no
   rights. But human beings have the right to freedom simply by virtue
   of being human. This means that there is no basis whatsoever for
   Free Software unless it is grounded in human freedom. It is the
   *human being's* right to freedom, and nothing else, that
   legitimises Free Software. Free Software that makes humans unfree
   is therefore a contradiction in terms.

4. Taking a Free Software application created by someone else and
   making it one's own exclusive property (by, for example,
   withholding source code and charging for binary licences), is
   *theft*. It is *major* theft if it is done in such a way that the
   proprietary version "kills off" the Free version by force of law or
   market. There is a moral law against theft.

5. Using a compiler/run-time to produce software unrelated to that
   compiler/run-time, is not theft. It is using the compiler/run-time
   as intended by the technical nature of the compiler/run-time. This
   is not theft, but using a tool in the intended way.

6. A software author may specify any conditions of use he/she prefers,
   but has no *right* to do so, because no one can have a right to do
   something that cannot be (morally) done. Think of your favourite
   offensive example here, such as, "Only to be used by whites." (The
   fact that there may be statutes restricting this in a particular
   time and place is irrelevant, since we are discussing things at a
   moral level here.) It is obvious that one cannot have a *right* to
   use violence against other people (including via the proxy of the
   "law"), and since the use of violence is the only way you will be
   able to prevent people from doing what you do not want them to do,
   you cannot have a "right" to thus prevent them. All you can do is
   express your wishes and expect that by and large people will follow
   them (if they see merit in them -- something which is unlikely in
   the example cited above).

7. Therefore, an author may express the desire that his run-time code
   not be included or linked into any non-Free binary. The intent of
   this wish is to force users of the compiler to licence their own
   work under a particular licence. The intent is not to protect one's
   own Free Software, but to coerce the actions of others. Thus, the
   intent is essentially violent, as it is impossible to force the
   actions of others without recourse to the use of violence.

8. The author's expressed desire in item 7 is therefore based on an
   immoral premise, and consequently there is no moral duty to respect
   the desire, the ends of which are immoral (just as there would be
   no moral duty to respect the author's wishes for only white people
   to use his compiler). Of course, one may still respect the author's
   wishes out of courtesy (especially if there are viable alternatives
   to using the author's compiler), but there is no moral compunction
   to do so. Whether or not there is a legal compunction in a
   particular time and place is irrelevant to this discussion.


> (Or at least you misunderstood what I meant when i used the
> quoted "Free") It is the stated position of the FSF that software
> should be "free". What they mean by that is not that developers should
> be free to do what they want. 

Yes, precisely what I was saying above: they want to make software
"Free" at the expense of human freedom. This is a contradiction in
terms. Software can have no rights. Only humans can.


> What the FSF wants is for end users to be free to get acess to
> source code for which they have binaries and for them to be free to
> give the source to others.  

This is a laudable desire, but, as everyone learns at mother's knee,
the ends do *not* justify the means. Actually, the ends *are* the
means.



> Several years ago they changed the acroynm for the Library GNU
> Public License (LGPL) to Lesser GNU Public License because the FSF
> believes it to be less "free".

This is pure sophistry on their part. There is no way that a GPL'ed
library can be more "Free" than an LGPL'ed library. The only
difference is what it forces other people to do with their own code.
The intent of using the GPL on libraries is *viral*, to use the common
term. GPL on non-library code (ordinary applications) is *not* viral,
and is perfectly safe for anyone to use, by the way (just for the
record -- I know you know that).

There are problems with the GPL. One is that it is not suitable for
library code because of its "viral" nature, which it needs to protect
normal applications. So, that's right: viral GPL'ed library code is
*not* morally acceptable, since the intent is *not* to protect one's
own work, but to coerce others. Now, how effective that coercion *is*
will depend on various factors, such as alternatives available, but
_coercion_ it remains.

Another problem is that there is not always a distinction between
application and library code. The compiler/run-time issue is a small
example, but a bigger example is the world of languages like Common
Lisp. Common Lisp programs work just like "libraries", so there is no
real distinction between "application" and "library" in Common
Lisp. For this reason, I should review my use of the GPL on my noughts
and crosses game in Common Lisp.


> You also said
>
>> As a final comment, I would add that I am not against the GPL in any
>> way except where it is used to gratuitously limited other people's
>> freedoms. The purpose of the GPL is to protect the freedom of
>> software, not to force other people to produce free software. A
>> compiler is a special class of program that allows the GPL to be
>> abused, because the *purpose* of a compiler is to facilitate the
>
> This is not correct. The purpose of the GPL IS to force people to
> write free software. 

Actually, *your* statement is incorrect. Sorry to be so contrary. Only
the GPL applied to a library is intended to coerce others.


David

-- 

David Trudgett
http://www.zeta.org.au/~wpower/

The whole system of domination might unravel if the idea of taking
matters into one's own hands spreads its evil tentacles.

    -- Noam Chomsky
       <http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20041217.htm>